Jamaica's Bobsled Team Isn't `Cool Runnings' Until The End

Film Review

Part low slapstick, part sports saga of losing and winning, "Cool Runnings" proves a bumpy, if finally heart-pounding, ride.

Clearly, if a preview audience gives any true indication, this fictionalized account of the ups and downs of the first Jamaican bobsled team will fill West Indian audiences with pride and delight.

Even at the beginning, as the film veers jerkily from one obvious comic situation to the next, the islanders are thrilled. Outsiders will probably warm to the story only when the team journeys north to the frozen runs of the winter Olympic Village in Calgary.

"Cool Runnings" begins in a merry mood in Jamaica, as speedster sprinter Derice Bannock prepares himself for trials for the track team that the Caribbean island will send to the Olympics. A local hero of sorts, especially beloved by women large and small, Derice races through the streets, exciting admiration. Like his father before him, this playboy of the West Indies, dashingly embodied by Leon, is determined to be an Olympian. But in the vital race, he is tripped up by a competitor who also falls to the cinders -- as does a third runner.

Meanwhile, this bright, almost blinding island comedy introduces its comical figure, the soapbox derby star Sanka Coffie, played goosey-loosey by the dreadlocked Doug E. Doug. After Derice loses hope of becoming an Olympic dash man, his dreams leap to bobsledding -- as an American promoter once sought his sprinter father for a Jamaican Olympic team. With his soapbox experience, Sanka looks like a natural for high-speed, downhill slipping and sliding.

With two other losing sprinters recruited -- the shrinking rich boy Junior Bevil, played with bright but cringing eagerness by Rawle D. Lewis, and the baleful, bald-shaven Yul Brenner, fiercely charged up by Malik Yoba -- the team is ready.

Irv, a onetime bobsledding gold medalist gone to seed, as played by the huge and unkempt John Candy, reluctantly agrees to be their coach after a tiresome scene in which he is hounded by Derice

and Sanka.

After some Keystone Kops practice sessions on Jamaica's snowless hills, and some cutesy fund-raising, the team and their mentor are off to the frozen north. There, with a jalopy sled, they are tormented by the European bobsledders, especially a neo-fascist East German. Irv's reputation as an Olympic cheat doesn't help.

Just when their plight looks hopeless, the team finally comes together. And bobsledding proves such a wonderfully cinematic sport -- much beloved of old newsreels -- that this collaboration between director Jon Turteltaub and assorted writers (including playwright Lynn Seifert and veteran writer-producer-director Michael Ritchie) finally picks up speed and gathers heart.

While far from the best of Ritchie's portrayals of winning and losing ("Downhill Racer," "The Bad News Bears"), "Cool Runnings" goes uphill, rather than down, and moves from bad news to good.

Rated PG, this film contains some impolite talk but generally fits comfortably under the Walt Disney banner.